When a death row prisoner has his date with the executioner commuted and starts a lifelong relationship with the inside of a prison instead, he will usually continue to explore every avenue to escape a prolonged life behind bars. Those explorations seldom amount to anything, but in the case of two prisoners waiting out their life-term in a jail in Kenya, luck – and a failure of Parliament to sort out a conflict of laws – was on their side.

Peter Muindi and Jimmy Musila were originally charged and convicted of attempted robbery with violence. On conviction they were sentenced to death. Though the death penalty was commuted to life, they lost both their appeal attempts (to the High Court and the Court of Appeal) on the question of conviction and appropriate sentence. That seemed to be the end of the road: they would have to reconcile themselves to spending the rest of their lives in jail.

Three former university professors have brought a claim in Kenya’s high court asking for restitution for human rights infringements. They seem to me part of a trend to end the culture of impunity in Kenya. The three had been detained and tortured under a previous government, and now, more than 30 years later, wanted recognition of what had happened, plus compensation for how their lives had been ruined by the unlawful action against them. The professors’ court challenge was not the first in Kenya in which compensation was demanded for human rights abuses under the previous regime and the courts now seem more comfortable about agreeing to hear matters arising from decades ago. Going from previous experience, however, I wonder how long the professors will have to wait for the damages, awarded by the courts, to be paid.

A PROMINENT senior lawyer in Kenya, Professor Tom Odhiambo Ojienda, has persuaded the high court in Nairobi to order that the country’s tax bosses give him a current tax compliance certificate. This despite the Kenya Revenue Authority’s earlier refusal to do so. The tax authorities say the lawyer owes them a lot of money and so they won’t issue the certificate. But Ojienda told the judge he needed the certificate so that he could contest a seat he wants to keep – on Kenya’s Judicial Service Commission, the body that helps select the country’s judges.